


(sing us) home again

by thelostcolony



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: BAMF Eurydice, F/M, Gen, OKAY don't panic orpheus dies but only for half a second, i'm telling you this now so that you don't PANIC, that's not a tag yet but by golly am I gonna make it one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-10-20 07:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20671724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelostcolony/pseuds/thelostcolony
Summary: Orpheus didn't look back. He clenched his fists, sang his song, played his lyre, and stood in the sun with Eurydice by his side.And then he died.Eurydice has a bit of a problem with that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's been so long since I posted a fic I almost forgot how to do the whole thing omfg
> 
> Hello Hadestown fandom! So my best friend dragged me kicking and screaming into Hadestown hell a month ago and since then I've created two tumblr rp blogs, come up with several fic ideas, written over 15k words of Hadestown content, and it's all to blame on @singsfree over on tumblr. She also helped me write this fic, so if you enjoy this please don't hesitate to go check out her work on tumblr!
> 
> I'm gonna be updating weekly, so you can expect the next chapter to be up on Monday at some point ! This is also the shortest chapter so uh strap in for Lots Of Words dfjjskadlflsadf
> 
> Without further ado, please enjoy and drop a comment on your thoughts!

**⚘**

“You won’t feel a thing, he said, when you go down.”

—_ Flowers, Hadestown _

**⚘ **

He looks beautiful.

Framed in the light of the sun (the sun, the _ lovely _ sun, so bright and warm, she’d forgotten, she’d _ forgotten_), lyre slung over his shoulder and eyes shining, he looks beautiful. His clothes are stained with blood and mud and the coal of the Hadestown air, polluted and smoggy, but she doesn’t care about them. She cares about _ him_, about his body and his heart and his song, his _ song_, his song he sang to bring her freedom. She loves him with every pulse of her newly beating heart.

He turns to her now like she’s his salvation. His one and only guiding light. “What happens now?”

Eurydice turns her face towards the sunbeams, allowing the distant warmth of its springlike light to sink into her skin, into her bones. She closes her eyes and inhales: it’s neither dark nor cold, and the air is scented with the crisp freshness that only spring can provide. She’d forgotten what it felt like to breathe clean air, to feel the sun’s kiss. She’d remembered only a field of flowers, lily white and poppy red, and Orpheus’ face, blurred at the edges, but his eyes, always his eyes, loving her endlessly and endlessly.

What happens now.

They saved the world. _ He _saved the world. She included herself because she was his muse (once something she thought to be fickle, now since proven eternal). And now that the world is back in tune…

She wants to - she _wants_. She yearns to feel soft flowers beneath her fingers, blades of soft grass. She craves gentle breezes and soft water trickling in a stream. She craves warm bread, a comfortable bed, and Orpheus, always Orpheus. She _wants needs _**_aches_** for him, for his arms around her, harboring her where he once could not.

“Now,” she says softly, so softly, because there is no machinery to be shouting over and no reason to hurt her throat, to hurt her soul. “Now we go home. We go home for _ real _now, forever.” She takes a step towards him, arms outstretched, and tucks herself against his chest, cheek pressed there to hear his heartbeat. He’s slim: he’s lost weight. The walk was long and dark. 

But her poet came for her. Her poet _ came _for her. 

She is no poet like her Orpheus. But perhaps she has something to offer.

She turns to him, heart full, a million words trapped behind her lips, and finally she sees him. Not her savior: not the boy who sang his heart out and saved the both of them. She sees Orpheus, his back bending under strain, his eyes dull and greyed, face gaunt and haunted. He looks exhausted. He looks ill.

It’s strange to see him like this, especially in his element. He’s amidst the sun and the trees and the breeze and the sky, and he looks like he’s just been condemned to the mines forever.

“Orpheus?” she whispers, voice wobbling. Her eyes track him as he sways in front of her, like a feather about to be whisked away on the air. “Orpheus, what’s wrong?”

His voice, when it comes, is a quiet croak. “I… I don’t feel well.”

Then his eyes roll up into the back of his head, and she fumbles to catch him on the way down.

**⚘ **

He burns with fever.

Regardless of what she does, she can’t cool him. She bathes his brow in cool cloths, ripped pieces of her own clothing. She forces water down his throat, tilting his head when he chokes on it so that he doesn’t suffocate to death. He hasn’t woken, and her heart beats a painful echo against her ribs. Her pulse is in her ears. It sounds like drumming.

The old innkeeper was nice enough to offer them a bed. She’d remembered Orpheus: had spared a care for Eurydice’s absence all these long months. Eurydice hadn’t the heart or the courage to explain what had happened. She hadn’t the words to tell the story that is Orpheus’ to sing.

A testament to how ill he is, she was able to drag him to the inn, up the stairs, to the bed. All these long months he’s gone with bare essentials: barely any food to eat, barely any rest or sleep. Such toil he’d endured to find her, to save her, and what has he been rewarded with?

Never has she wished more for his words to her — those goldspun, gossamer words of rivers’ gold and trees’ fruits and eiderdown — to be true. It’s what he deserves: it’s what he’s earned.

And yet here he lies, burning with fever, with naught but Eurydice and the kindness of a stranger to cater to him. It isn’t enough.

He’s growing weaker by the day, pale in a way he’s never been (fair-skinned, always, but sun-kissed and vibrant and full of life that Eurydice tries to will into him now). She tries so terribly hard to see him the way things could be: the fever breaking, his eyes clear, that wonderful, lovely smile - but all she can see is the way he is now. His protruding ribs, the droplets of sweat that return to his forehead no matter how diligently she dries it, the red of the veins that branch out across eyelids that refuse to open.

She does not have the gifts that her poet has. 

**⚘ **

On the fifth day, his fever rises high enough for delirium.

In the middle of a nap, curled up at his side (too afraid to leave him lest he slip away, slip away without a word, without a sound, no one to hear him, no one to wake him as he goes down), she’s struck by the inability to breathe. Eurydice lays there in mute terror, utterly consumed by horror; for a breathless second, she’s back in Hadestown, suffocated by the ash in the air and the heat of the wind, howling, always howling, howling right in her ear -

But then the grip shifts down and she takes a deep, gasping breath as the pressure on her ribs is relieved. Her lungs shudder as they expand, inhaling the cool evening air of summer through the window, tinged with the smell of sickness that permeates all rooms that house the ill. Huffs of hot breath are blown on the top of her head, a whining sound high in her ear; for a moment she thinks it’s the wind still, somehow whistling so close, but no — it’s Orpheus.

She turns over, wiggling free of weak arms that attempt to squeeze the life out of her. His face is a mixture of heartbreak and pain, screwed up against whatever he sees behind his closed eyes. Tears leak from beneath his eyelids, stuffy breathing hitching and desperate.

“Orpheus,” she says softly, scooting closer to him to smooth the hair off his forehead, to press her cold hands to his heated cheeks. He’s burning up: his fever is worse. Still, she can’t simply get up for a cloth and leave him like this. “I’m right here, right beside you, and I have been all along. The dark and cold are over, we made it out. No need to fear, now. I’m here.”

He moans quietly, a wretched sound. Orpheus is many things, but he wasn’t made to be so miserable, wasn’t made for this harshness. He is the bloom of summer leaves and wildflowers growing in impossible places. He is gentle breezes, easy days and happy tunes, quiet humming in the fading light of the sunset. He’s her world; he’s the reason for the everlasting summer to her faith now, the neverending love she has for him.

“Orpheus,” she repeats, and angles his head towards her. His face is grey but for two bright, impossible splashes of color on his cheeks, red like the carnation he’d gifted her. The color once would have warmed her heart: now it fills it with dread. “Orpheus, can you hear me?”

He moans again, and tosses his head weakly. “‘Rydice,” he whimpers, and more tears leak down his cheeks.

Her lips wobble traitorously, and she presses them persistently together as she kisses the tears away. “Hold on, my love,” she murmurs against his sweaty forehead, kissing there too for good measure. Then she reaches over for the water pitcher and refills the cup. “Shh, sh, I’m right here, right beside you. Drink, please, Orpheus.”

She tilts the water between his parted lips. He coughs it up.

“Please,” she repeats, heart pounding, and tries once more. He’s too weak to try resisting again, and it slides down his throat without fight as he falls back into a fitful sleep, never having been fully awake.

Eurydice closes her eyes. She fights as hard as she can against the tears that rise and burn at the back of her eyelids.

In the end, she presses her face to Orpheus’ hot neck to hide them from herself and the world.

**⚘ **

She naps when she can.

She sleeps beside him, always. She drowses in stolen snatches of time, when the delirium releases him long enough to give him a bit of rest and Eurydice the snippet of a break. These pauses aren’t nearly long enough or undisturbed enough to truly satisfy any sort of need for sleep, but they’re enough that Eurydice can sustain herself upon them. 

His moments of lucidity are few and far between; he hasn’t been fully conscious and aware since that first day they’d made it out, when the sun had kissed their skin and he’d been there against the sky. She had looked at him then and seen someone infinite, seen her poet but also seen someone foreign and new, carved from trials and tribulations and victorious in all of them. 

But even Orpheus is human. In the end, they all rot. They all fall apart.

She cries when she can, because sometimes there are battles you simply can’t win.

If she strays too far from him, he somehow finds the strength to wander after her. Twice she’s had to collect him from downstairs in the tavern, half asleep and calling for her, frantic in his delirium. 

Desperately, with no other options on hand, Eurydice opens all the windows to let in the new summer breeze, the fresh air refreshing her almost instantly. Caught in this stuffy room with nothing but Orpheus’ feverish mumbling for company has taken its toll, and she inhales deeply for a few moments. Was it only a week ago that they stepped out into the light? That she celebrated seeing him framed by the sun?

Was it only a week ago that he was rendered so helpless and ill?

It feels like an age.

Unbidden, Eurydice’s eyes fill with tears. “Help us,” she whispers. “Please, help us.”

The wind picks up, a distant howl over the distance, and doesn’t answer.

**⚘ **

She can’t get him to eat or drink.

He lays in bed, and looks like a shade. The delirious murmurings have long passed and paved the way for silence. Drenched in sweat, breathing barely there and hitching, Orpheus is a step away from crossing the threshold.

Eurydice is helpless. She doesn’t know what to do.

She prays and prays, and no one comes. She cries, because that’s all she can do now.

Laying beside him, tears leaking out of her eyes to pool against her pillow, she traces the lines of Orpheus’ face, fingertips trailing over cracked lips and grey cheeks. He has no color to his skin anymore. He has no life. All that is left is a suffering shell, abandoned by its master.

She leans forward and carefully (so, so carefully) presses her ear to his chest. His heart beats so faintly, she strains to hear it.

Tears roll past her lips, and she licks them away.

He won’t make it.

She knows this with certainty. He won’t make it. Not her beautiful, beautiful Orpheus, with his bright eyes and quick grin and easygoing heart. Her poet is already lost to her, somewhere she can no longer reach him. She remembers keenly what it felt to be so close to death; suddenly nothing seemed as it was. She had felt abandoned. She didn’t get to say goodbye.

She doesn’t want him to feel the same way.

Scooting up to look at his face, she smooths away his sweat damp hair, pressing a kiss to his forehead. She hovers there, stroking his cheek with her thumb, watching him and watching him and watching him.

“Orpheus,” she whispers finally, her breath hitching softly. “Orpheus, my heart is yours. Always was, and will be. Please, always remember I love you. I love you so much. I love you.”

Through cracked lips, through the deafening silence, she hears it. She hears her name.

_ “...Eurydice…” _

Too late, she realizes it’s an exhale. 

It’s a goodbye.

She stares at him, at his unmoving lips, frozen in the ghost of his last smile. She waits for him, waits for him to move, to breathe. She waits, and waits, and waits, because he always comes — he will always come for her.

She waits, and he doesn’t move. He doesn’t move.

_ He’s gone. _

“No, _no!” _ the sob passes her lips before she feels it form. The thought of him - her warmth, her sun, her world - trapped down there, wings clipped and strings cut, lyrics choked out through smog and smoke, is too much to bear. She feels her heart quiver with it: she’d trembled when King Hades had lain her out, but now she trembles all the harder at the thought of Orpheus stuck forever in that wretched place.

Having clutched him closer to her, fingers threaded through his hair, she loosens her hold, finally aware that she may have pulled some strands. She never wants him to hurt: she never wants him to go hungry, whether it be for freedom or for music or for _ life._ But he’s deprived of all of that now, all of that is gone from him, gone beyond his reach.

But the idea of Orpheus signing his life away, giving away everything that makes him so beautiful … is unbearable to her. She would have rather watched him walk away, watched him leave her a thousand times, than to watch everything - his lyre, his lyrics, his lovely, lovely sunshine - be stripped from him.

“Orpheus, no,” she says again, pleading. Tears drip off her nose and fall to his cheeks. “You can’t. Don’t leave me, Orpheus. Don’t go.”

She strokes his cheek again, and presses her lips there, feather light. She places her mouth close to his ear, cheek pressed against his, feeling his warmth, feeling his skin, for the last time. It’s already growing cold. He already feels clammy, like clay without a shape: a piece of art without soul.

Her voice drops to a breathless whisper. “You can’t go. You can’t leave me. Please don’t leave me, Orpheus. _ I love you.” _

But her poet doesn’t answer her.

Her heart shatters like finely spun glass against concrete. The delicate thread of hope she’s been clinging to snaps, and leaves her falling endlessly back down into the cold and dark. Without her poet, her light, her sunshine — all of the things that were good in this world — there’s no reason to keep trying. No reason to keep breathing.

She curls up beside him, tucks her head beneath his chin. She quivers. Everything is lost to her. Everything that ever mattered.

He’s gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, the way is dark and long...
> 
> He's already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone and welcome back ! The positive feedback on the first chapter was amazing, thank you so much to everyone who commented, bookmarked, and gave me kudos! It really makes my day every time someone reacts to something I've written <3 
> 
> If any of you are interested, I have a roleplay blog for Hades over @riiotkissed on tumblr ! And my co-author Jules has an Orpheus blog over @singsfree, please please check her out!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy this chapter just as much! Please drop a comment on your thoughts if you enjoy it !
> 
> Without further ado: ALL ABOARD! 'cause we're going way down to Hadestown.

**⚘ **

“Oh, my heart, it aches to stay… but the flesh will have its way.”

— _ I’m Gone, Hadestown _

**⚘ **

_ Orpheus. _Her voice sounds so different. He can scarcely believe it’s hers. It’s weaker than he’s ever heard it, full of grief and weariness. And the weariness he understands. Orpheus feels more weary than he ever has. Breathing alone takes all the energy he can muster, and he’s long since given up on lifting eyelids that are as heavy as the bricks they use to build the wall in Hadestown.

To speak at all is a herculean task (it isn’t enough to keep him from trying: he’s trumped the impossible more than once on her behalf). Finally, after an eternity of trying, his lips form a shape. Breath comes to him to be shuddered out. "_Eurydice._”

Saying her name does not drain him the way he’d feared. Instead, he feels light, lighter than he’s felt since he made his way underground. He's free. 

“Not quite, son.”

He opens his eyes.

King Hades looks just the same as he did last he and Orpheus met: the pinstripe suit is pressed and flawless, not a thread out of place or a sleeve creased. The only difference is the splotch of color, poppy red, that’s pinned to Hades' chest. He’s staring at Orpheus with an expression that’s unreadable (though most expressions, to Orpheus, tend to be unless they’re Eurydice’s.)

Eurydice.

“Where is she?” he blurts, hands flying to the strap on his chest — _ his chest _ — no strap. His fingers scrabble for a second against loose fabric, searching, until they process the absence and press flat against the buttons there. “Where’s Eurydice?!”

King Hades holds up a hand, and Orpheus swallows down the millions of questions that batter against his lips in an attempt to escape. Hades is no god to mess with; Orpheus had only scraped by their last encounter by the skin of his teeth. He’d nearly turned around so many times, so many times…

But he didn’t. Did he? _ Did he turn? _Is that what this is?

He opens — closes — opens — closes his mouth. He has to ask, but fear grips him, chokes the life from his lungs. He can’t breathe for it. His chest is tight. Hades lowers his hand, as if sensing Orpheus’ rising panic.

Orpheus forces the words past a numb tongue. “What happened?”

Hades simply looks at him. “You’re early.”

Orpheus’ brows furrow. “I’m… early for what?”

Hades’ mouth slowly spreads into a grin, something shark-like and wry. “Your train.” In the hand he hadn’t previously held up, he brandishes something that he extends Orpheus’ way.

Orpheus' stomach plummets.

“What is that?” he hears himself ask, distantly.

“Your ticket,” Hades replies, voice low.

He’s been told he has a gift for seeing the world the way it _ could be_. In truth, it’s more of a refusal to admit the way that things are. “No,” he answers, voice final.

The King’s amusement only seems to grow. An eyebrow raises. “I don’t recall asking you a _ question,_ son.”

“No,” Orpheus repeats. He’s just come back. He made it all that way, without turning around or knowing if Eurydice was still behind him. Orpheus _ kept _ his side of the bargain. He gets to live out his life with Eurydice now, that’s the _ deal_. “I’m not going.”

He’s toeing a thin line between Hades’ entertainment and irritation. The grin is still there, though his lips have thinned. Orpheus doesn’t care. He’s faced the full of Hades’ wrath before, and come out on top. He has nothing to fear. Nothing to fear, except being separated from Eurydice. But he won’t let that happen.

“I’m trying to help you, boy, even though you’re too stupid to see it.”

Orpheus stares at Hades blankly. _ Help him? _

The smile drops entirely from Hades’ face, replaced by a hand pinching the bridge of his nose and a deep sigh. “You can stay here if you want, but then that girl of yours will have walked all that way for nothing.”

“I don’t understand.”

Hades puts a manicured hand on his shoulder. “It’s like this, son: you’re already dead.”

The statement makes him suck in a sharp inhale, though he no longer needs to breathe. 

“Now we both know your little songbird isn’t gonna let that _ fly_, but there’s not much she can do for you if you stick up here as a shade. Or, more precisely, I can’t let you _ go _ if you never enter Hadestown in the first place.”

His mind races to process this, still reeling from the sudden revelation of his _ death. _He can’t take this much at once. “You’re gonna let us go?” he asks, voice meeker than intended. 

“A deal’s a deal, and I keep my deals. Unless you think I’m not a man of my word.” There’s a hidden threat there that Orpheus isn’t fool enough not to hear.

He remains silent, as good an acknowledgement as any. A moment passes, and then the king hums. “Besides. You think I’m gonna ruin things with my wife before we’ve even begun to try? I suppose I finally have an answer to my question.”

Orpheus is seventeen steps behind. “What question is that?”

Hades looks at him. “Whether you’re brave or stupid, son.” He extends his hand again, and opens his fist. Within it lies a single silver coin. Orpheus' ticket to Hadestown. “Prove me wrong.”

Orpheus has little choice in the matter. He could stay here and fade, turn into a shade and wander for all eternity in the lonesome fields of Asphodel, unable to think or sing or remember. Or he could take the ticket and wait with Mister Hades in Hadestown, working the time away. 

Orpheus stares at King Hades, and then the coin.

Eurydice waited for him all that time it took him to walk. And Orpheus… 

Orpheus has faith that she’s coming. He has faith that she’s on her way to him, following him back into the cold and dark. They promised to walk beside one another, and that’s what he knows she’s going to have them do. She’s a stubborn one, his wife. She did her time.

Now it’s his turn to wait for her. 

The thought makes him smile, and he meets Hades’ gaze with his own eyes shining, and takes the coin.

**⚘ **

A beat passes.

“Wipe that smile off your face,” Hades says as a distant _ chugga chugga chugga chugga _ reaches their ears, a whistle high in the wind. “You look like a fool.”

**⚘ **

As the train gets closer, Orpheus finally comes to the realization that they need a train station or else the train won’t physically have anywhere to stop. It only takes him a few more seconds to realize that the train station is materializing around them, and so finding it won’t be an issue.

It’s an odd thing, to watch his surroundings fade and simultaneously reappear as something different, and it preoccupies him for the rest of the time that the train takes to pull into the station. When it finally does, Orpheus stares at it in wonder. 

Some part of him had pictured the journey down as being as grueling as his initial descent. The walk had been long and dark, through cold fog and ever present mist, the only guide he had a railroad track and telephone wire. He’d only known he was on course by the many challenges he’d faced and all the running he’d had to do away from danger. This is... a welcome change to that.

Now that the train is pulling in, Orpheus notices that there are figures materializing as well. They’re fuzzy around the edges — already fading — and it occurs to him two seconds too late that maybe the reason he’s not fuzzing around the edges is because Hades has been keeping him company. 

He studies the others with interest, eyes flitting from one to another. There’s actually one figure in particular that captures his attention, and it takes him several more seconds than it should to properly identify who it is. When he does, he can’t contain his happiness.

“Mister Hermes!”

The figure turns, and sure enough the smile belongs to the station manager. “Well if it ain’t the big artiste,” he drawls as he comes closer. “Don’t tell me you’ve got yourself stuck again, please.”

“He’s with me,” Hades says, a gruff drawl, and Hermes turns his attention to the king. “An unfortunate happenstance of making it out, is all.”

Hermes hums. “I thought making it out meant being alive,” he says. “On top, living it up.”

“So did I,” Orpheus mutters.

Hades, from his side, radiates a warning. Orpheus hadn’t even thought it was possible to radiate such a thing through aura alone, but it’s enough to make him shut his mouth and keep it shut. He may have come out on top last time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to try his luck.

“Plans change,” Hades says. He smooths out invisible creases on his suit. “And speaking of plans, we have a train to catch. Say goodbye.”

It takes Orpheus a moment to realize Hades is addressing him.

“Oh! Uh, goodbye, Mister Hermes,” he says lamely, and offers an awkward wave. 

Hermes salutes, a wry twist to his mouth. “See you on the flipside, brotha.” Then he turns away, presumably to help guide more people onto the train. Orpheus watches him go, heart aching.

The car they enter is lavish, almost aggressively so. The seats are a rich burgundy and made of some luxurious fabric he can't identify. The walls are a charcoal color, the lights lining the ceiling bathing the whole car in a soft amber glow. What little light is provided from the windows is soothing rather than ominous, and Orpheus gazes around with something twisting in his gut. He can’t identify if it’s awe or unease.

He settles in the seat opposite Hades, there being only one booth in the whole car. The rest is lined with liquor cabinets and various trinkets that he tries not to examine too closely; he figures King Hades would appreciate nothing less than Orpheus’ curiosity.

From the way Hades studies him, Orpheus is right.

Minutes pass, and then the whistle blows. The train lurches beneath them; Orpheus grabs the edges of the seat, fingers scrabbling against velvety fabric, but Hades himself is motionless and unperturbed. It takes a solid several seconds of clickety clacking along before Orpheus feels comfortable enough to let go again and settle back.

It lulls him. The train hums a steady tune beneath him, enough to make him drowsy on any good living day, and seeing as the alternative to sleeping is fretting over Eurydice while Hades observes... Orpheus thinks it's a good enough time to nap as any.

He leans his head against the window, closing his eyes, and slowly inhales and exhales even though he doesn't need to. The action brings him some semblance of comfort, of familiarity, so he does it again.

“You did hear me when I said you were dead?” Hades' voice pierces the silence. “You don't need to breathe. Or sleep.”

In reply, Orpheus slackens his features like he's fallen asleep, deepening his breathing.

_ “Brat,” _ says Hades after a moment, voice a deep rumble. Orpheus freezes, thinking he’s been discovered, but when all that he hears is the brief shifting of fabric he has to use all his willpower to stifle his smile.

As far as terms of endearment go, that’s not the worst to own.

**⚘ **

He must manage to actually fall asleep, because he’s startled awake by a shrill whistling noise.

Blearily, he sits up. The world spins, and he presses his knuckles to his eyes in an attempt to steady himself. Above him, Hades lets out a low, rolling noise like rocks scraping against one another. It takes Orpheus a few seconds to register that it’s a laugh.

“Up and at ‘em, son,” Hades says. “Can’t stay on the train forever.”

Orpheus takes another second to make sure he’s steady before he lowers his hands from his face and attempts to stand. He wobbles, knees weak, and Hades rolls his eyes and steadies him with a firm grip on his elbow. “On your feet. Wouldn’t due to fall any further from grace.”

Orpheus winces, but doesn’t have the energy to disagree. The small amount of sleep he’s gotten on the train ride has drained him somehow instead of reinvigorating him, and he wants nothing more than to find a soft place to lay his head again. 

He shuffles out of the train car and into the humid, smoggy air — but to his surprise, he isn’t greeted by the glaring neon city. Instead, the air is clearer here and the ground lusher, the lights dim in the distance. It takes him a moment to realize that they must have exited on Hades’ personal platform. 

Orpheus’ brows furrow. “We’re not… I’m not going to work?”

Hades looks at him with an unreadable expression. It's often enough now that Orpheus decides to give up on trying to decipher it. “And let the workers see that their hero is back? Certainly not.” Hades snorts. “Things are changing here in Hadestown, son, but seeing you back here would cause a riot not even I could quell.”

Orpheus frowns. He’d thought — well, he’d assumed that he would be working the time away in the mines, as far from Hades as possible. Orpheus can’t imagine Hades actually enjoys his company, all things considered. But it _has_ been a few months since the actual revolution took place: it’s easy to forget that they walked that long through the cold and dark. Time seems endless and unmoving when you’ve only got train tracks and telephone wires to guide you.

Without a response, Hades seems to deem it the time to start walking, and Orpheus trails after him, deep in thought. He stares at where he puts his feet as he walks, attention divided between following Hades and ensuring that he doesn’t trip. His knees still feel wobbly from his nap, and his mind is running away without him, so much so that it’s taking most of his concentration to keep up with his own thoughts.

Finally, after gaining some semblance of control, he dares to voice what’s on his mind. “So… what exactly will I be doing until Eurydice gets here, Mister Hades?”

Hades doesn’t falter. “Oh, I’m sure we can find something for you to do around the estate while you stay. There’s plenty of work to be done, even if it isn’t in the mines, son.”

Orpheus mulls that over, trying to figure out why that sounds wrong. When his finger lands on it, it only leaves him with more questions.

_ While he stays on the estate? _

**⚘ **

Well. Hades wasn’t lying to him: it really is an estate.

It’s beautiful. Porcelain white in an otherwise dusty, dreary landscape, it stands out like a diamond gleaming amongst dirt, bright and pearlescent. There are gardens surrounding it that have somehow managed to survive Hadestown and its brutal atmosphere — thanks to Lady Persephone’s tenderness, Orpheus guesses. The paths are elaborate and wind around the grounds like a coiled snake, dormant but still dangerous if one gets tangled up in them. Hades narrates little, but he does tell Orpheus not to wander too far off the larger paths: it’s easy to get lost in Hadestown, and even easier to lose yourself.

Orpheus has few plans about straying from the estate. As far as he’s concerned, this is his base until Eurydice comes to get him, which could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months from now depending on her pace. Even at his quickest, he couldn’t avoid all of the obstacles that had stood in his way, and they’d delayed him greatly.

Speaking of obstacles — 

“Eurydice won’t be hurt, will she?” he asks, meeker than he’d like. Hades turns to regard him, and Orpheus rushes through his explanation. “It’s just that when I was on my way here, many things — delayed me and, and —”

“I cleared the path, if that’s what you’re asking,” Hades says. Then, after a beat of silence, he adds: “for a poet, your ineloquence is astoundingly apparent.”

Orpheus doesn’t have the energy to be embarrassed. He follows Hades up the grand steps and into the foyer, desperately trying to remain on track and not become distracted by the decor. It’s all rich, warm colors and finely chosen furniture — maybe Lady Persephone’s touch. Persephone - Eurydice. That's right. “She’ll be safe until she gets here?” He presses.

Hades makes a tisking noise, already several strides ahead of him. “I can’t guarantee her safe arrival,” he says, leading the way down a corridor to a liquor cabinet. He pours himself a generous three fingers of bourbon and takes a sip. “I’ve made it as easy as I can for you, son. Don’t push your luck.”

Orpheus swallows back his retort, watching as Hades sips at his drink. Here, in his home, Orpheus had thought Hades would seem… less intimidating, maybe? More human? A foolish thought: gods aren’t humans in the first place. There’s no reason to assume that Hades would seem more mortal, or possibly more vulnerable. But Orpheus had thought that perhaps at home, he’d see a different side to Hades than the cruel slave master. 

Not that he hadn’t seen that mask crack already, but… it was never a terrible thing to be reminded of someone’s kinder qualities.

Hades continues to ignore him, wandering away with his bourbon in hand. After a moment, Orpheus follows after him. They walk through corridors and make several turns before Hades comes to a closed door, which he opens wordlessly and enters the room behind it. Orpheus waits another minute, just to see if Hades will say anything, and when he doesn’t trails into the room as well.

It’s a lavish office, fit only for a king. The walls are dark mahogany; the ceiling and floors deep black tile. The desk itself is a monstrosity, a hulking thing with a huge throne on one side and a peasant’s seat on the other. Was this what Eurydice faced when she came here to sign her life away? Did she feel hesitant, did she want to go back? Did she step in and feel so frozen that she couldn’t find a way to step back out?

Orpheus shudders.

Hades sits at the desk, presumably not noticing Orpheus’ presence, and instantly shuffles around the papers that line it, inspecting each pile with intensity. After a moment, he picks up the furthest stack and sets it before him, donning a pair of spectacles before he begins to flick through it.

The scene hits Orpheus differently than anything ever has. It instantly softens Hades in a way Orpheus himself doesn’t understand. It makes him look — not fatherly, but perhaps something reminiscent of it. It reminds Orpheus of all the times he’s been rebuked by employers, or else praised for good work; reminds him of the crushing feeling of disappointing someone, and of the glowing one positive acknowledgement brings. There’s an unexpectedly childish quality to the memories. It’s odd, but not uncomfortable.

A few beats pass this way, with Orpheus staring blatantly and Hades studiously ignoring him. 

“Either make yourself useful, or don’t disturb me,” Hades rumbles finally. Orpheus jumps. 

“Er… yes, Mister Hades,” he says, awkwardly shifting in place before deciding that retreating is the best option. Ducking back out into the hallway and softly closing the door behind him, Orpheus staggers a few steps and stalls where he stands, leaning against the wall for support.

Without Hades’ presence to subdue the panic inside him, Orpheus feels keenly all that he’s been repressing since Hades showed up and told him he was… told him he was _ dead._

It’s an odd thing, being faced with one’s morality, and Orpheus distantly realizes that this isn’t the way to handle it: sagging against the wall, feeling a phantom heart pounding against his ribs and nonexistent lungs heaving for air. It leaves him breathless when breathing isn’t even necessary; leaves him dizzy from it even when physicality is no longer a concern. He labors under that load, bowing under it so that his head is lower than his knees, trying to get something back under control (even if it’s simply his balance).

Hours feel like they pass before Orpheus is brave enough to push his head higher. He’s been crying — he’d registered it in a far, dim sort of way — but now his eyes ache. They’ll likely puffy and extremely red; he’ll have to be sure to have that under control before Hades sees. 

He looks down at his trembling hands, all at once agonizingly aching for his lyre. It’d be something to do with his fingers. Something to preoccupy his thoughts and his body. His music is something that fills him up, that captures his full attention. And it’s not here. He’s alone, truly alone here in Hades’ sprawling estate, without even his lyre — his faithful companion through his whole life, to this point — to keep him company.

Suddenly, nothing is as it was. The way back to the surface — even Eurydice’s way here — seems infinitely darker and longer, without a single thing to keep him company.

His heart aches.

He wonders if this is how Eurydice felt. If this was how badly she wished she had stayed.

He hopes not.

Because this is worse than anything he’s ever felt.

**⚘ **

At the end of his episode, he ends up finding the nearest couch and curling up on it, hugging a pillow to his chest. There’s a blanket hanging over the armrest that he sort of wants to crawl beneath, but he’s not a child and refuses to wrap himself up like one.

It’s still a little absurd to think that the king of the Underworld has things like throw pillows and couches. But maybe it’s even more absurd to think that he wouldn’t have things like that. He is, after all, a king. Owning castles — _ estates _— sort of comes with the title. So does the luxury of the fabrics, so Orpheus shouldn’t be surprised by those, either.

He’s sort of too exhausted to be anything. He wants to fall asleep. Close his eyes and disappear.

But he knows that won’t happen. 

He curls a little tighter around the pillow, rubbing his cheek against the soft fabric of the couch cushion. He sniffs a little, eyes still watery from crying so much, the stray tear or two leaking out every so often. It’s not enough to ruin the material under him, but it is enough to keep his eyes sore. He closes them, hiccuping, and does his best to relax.

When he opens them again, it feels like no time has passed. It must have, though, because Orpheus’ body is stiff with sleep and there’s a blanket lying over him. He doesn’t remember pulling it over himself, but it was on the back of the couch and well within reach. Eurydice always said he was a blanket stealer anyway.

Eurydice.

His heart pangs, and it’s with an abrupt wince that he recalls what sent him to sleep in the first place. He sits up slowly, body aching, and scrubs at his cheek where he feels indentations from the fabric against his skin. That’s really how he knows time has passed, then.

He climbs to his feet, stretching as he goes. It’s chilly, so he grabs the blanket and wraps it around his shoulders, scanning his surroundings. He doesn’t have a destination in mind. He wants to stay out of Hades’ way just as much as he wants company, and the two desires war within him. In the end, his loneliness gets the better of him and he pads towards Hades’ office. The door is cracked, and there’s a sliver of light pooled on the ground before it, a dim amber glow in the otherwise dark hallway. There’s no night and day here in Hadestown, but Orpheus thinks it must be late in the evening or very early in the morning. It just… feels that way.

He hesitates at the door for a few seconds. But what is Hades going to do to him, in the end? Hades had said it himself: he keeps his deals. And Orpheus… Orpheus is far from the boy who shook in the spotlight, singing his song in front of thousands to hear. He’s far from the boy who was intimidated by Hades all those months ago. He’s led a revolution. He’s walked to and from the Underworld and made it, both times. 

He nudges the door open.

Hades doesn’t look up, but he does tilt his head minutely. Orpheus swallows down the nervousness he can feel rising in spite of himself and plods into the room. He takes a seat in the peasant’s chair and draws his legs up so that his feet are off the floor, then redistributes the blanket so that the blanket covers all of him. It’s huge, and it shelters him without problems.

Hades’ pen doesn’t stop scratching against paper, and Orpheus stares at it moving, almost lulled. He doesn’t understand why he’s so sleepy; he’s napped twice in a handful of hours and he’s. Dead. He technically doesn’t need sleep, like Hades said. But the scratch of the pen is its own lullaby, and Orpheus’ eyes are still aching and heavy from his earlier panic attack.

He dozes sitting up, head cushioned against his knees, blanket wrapped around him. That steady scratching sound never wavers, and it almost keeps him from resurfacing. Every time he floats back to awareness, he willingly lets himself be pulled back under by drowsiness, secure in the fact that if not completely sheltered, he’s still safe.

A hand shaking his shoulder is what finally stirs him, and he raises his head, blearily looking around. The scratching has stopped, and when he turns his head to the left he’s abruptly greeted with pinstripe fabric. 

“Come along,” Hades says. His tone is indistinguishable. “To a bed.”

Orpheus murmurs in agreement, flopping out of the chair and to his feet. He sways before he can steady himself, smushing into the suit beside him. Rather than push him off, though, Hades just tolerates the pressure until Orpheus rights himself and mutters an apology. He’s so tired that he’s not sure he’s completely awake. Hades leads the way out of the room, and Orpheus stumbles to keep up, rubbing at his eyes.

“Why’m I so tired?” He mumbles to himself, cranky.

“Usually are, when you don’t have a purpose down here,” Hades says briskly, and Orpheus startles a little further awake at the tone. “It’s why I made ‘em work in the first place. You fade if you don’t got one. Hence why I said _ make yourself useful _ and not _ take a nap on the couch. _The scales are tippin’ towards ‘stupid’ again, son.”

Orpheus blinks owlishly at Hades’ back. “So then shouldn’t I be working?” He asks, ignoring the last statement.

Hades sends a look over his shoulder that tells Orpheus in no uncertain terms how Hades feels about that. “Unless you think you got the backbone to do it, boy, you should quit volunteering.”

Orpheus nods, mouth impossibly dry. He licks his lips, trying to get some saliva going, but it still takes him a long moment to feel like he’s not got cotton shoved under his tongue. “Then how _ do _I make myself useful, Mister Hades?”

Hades sighs irritably. “I don’t know, boy,” he snaps. “Make a lyre, sing a song, do a dance. It don’t matter what you choose so long as it’s _ yours_.” He comes to an abrupt stop, and it takes all of Orpheus’ might not to slam right into his back. They’re standing in front of a plain door, plainer than the rest of the estate. Hades continues without acknowledging Orpheus’ scrutiny. “Someone’ll come fetch you if you don’t make yourself known by a proper time.”

He turns on his heel.

“Mister Hades!” Orpheus calls at his back, suddenly desperate. Hades doesn’t turn back, but he does stop. “I never did say thank you, for — for, uh. Any of this. So. Thank you.”

Hades is silent for a beat.

“Ineloquence strikes the cretin again,” he says under his breath, and leaves Orpheus in the hallway alone. 

Orpheus can’t help it. He smiles.

When he fashions his new lyre, he’ll just have to change Hades’ mind.

  
**⚘ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave me a comment on your thoughts and thank you so much for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eurydice gears up.

**⚘ **

“And there ain’t a thing that you can do when the weather takes a turn on you — ‘cept for hurry up and hit the road.”

— _ Any Way the Wind Blows, Hadestown _

**⚘ **

_ Widow._

The word should take her by surprise. Should strike some sort of emotion within her. Whether it be grief, or hurt, or disbelief, it should inspire some reaction in her, some gut-jerking flash of pain. To use the term _ widow _should seem odd to her, a runaway from everywhere she’s ever been. It should seem impossible that she’s married. Or was. _ Was _married. Handfast though they were, and hastily though the words between them were spoken, her and Orpheus’ marriage was no less genuine than anyone else’s.

Likely, it had been more genuine than most.

But the word widow does not make her ache with sorrow. It does not pierce her with grief. It certainly does not immobilize her the way she’d thought it would when she left Orpheus lying on the dirty, cold mattress in that drafty inn, left to the innkeeper and her husband’s devices while Eurydice retreated to grieve privately.

No.

The word _ widow _endows her with conviction like she’s never known.

She is young. But she’s hardly a girl: she’s wise to the ways of the world now, of its cruelty and relentlessness. She’s known since she was a child the nature of fair weathered friends, how the wind could change at the drop of a hat or the pop of a collar. Like a petal in roaring rapids, Eurydice has always done her best to keep her head above water, hardly thinking about more than where she could find her next meal and where to lay her head for the night.

But since Orpheus had come into her life… he had held her aloft, above the river, and shown her how beautiful it could be. With the sun’s reflection on the seafoam, Eurydice could almost believe that the world was picturesque, as eternally beautiful as Orpheus made it out to be.

It’s neither. The rapids are rough, but they are not debilitating. Not anymore. Not when she knows that Orpheus is there, waiting for her.

She waited for him. She knows he awaits her down in Hadestown, clinging to the memory of her voice or the sun gleaming on her skin. She knows he’s singing, right now, by the way the breeze caresses her cheek, and the leaves rustle gently. She knows that he’s waiting for her.

A widow she may be, but Eurydice is young. She is wise to the ways of the world.

And a widow she refuses to remain.

**⚘ **

The first thing she grabs is, ironically, Orpheus’ lyre.

She slings it around her neck, adjusting its strap until it rests over her chest where her heart lays. It sits comfortably on her shoulders, but not as comfortably as it would sit on its owner’s. The thought makes her heart pound. Determination floods her gut again.

She doesn’t bother with the trivial things. Orpheus certainly didn’t. Instead, she gently takes his kerchief from around his neck and fastens it around her own, tucking her nose to it and breathing in his scent. It gives her strength, more strength than she could have possibly known she had.

She grabs other things — matches; a lantern; a rope, knife, and basic toolkit; she layers her clothing, tucks away salted meats and dried fruits. Armed to the teeth with Orpheus’ lyre on her back and matches in her pocket, she feels invincible.

She doesn’t need gods or men to guide her: she knows the way. She’s going back the way she came, through the cold and dark, down to Hadestown — to her heart. Her feet walk the paths they once trailed, following Orpheus’ footsteps in the dying light. 

She finds the railroad track.

Bathed in the setting sun, a barely lit road that will darken all the more as she goes, Eurydice stands there with her fists balled at her sides, tears in her eyes, and her heart out on her sleeve. She’s a poor girl. But she has a gift to give. 

She’s going to find Orpheus, and bring her world back into tune.

_ Wait for me, _ she thinks, heart burning fiercely with the desire to run and run and run to him. _ I’m coming. _

**⚘ **

The walk sucks.

It’s darker and colder and longer than she remembers. The first time she’d made this walk (and gods, _ gods_, the _ first _time, as if anyone is meant to walk this road more than once), she’d had Orpheus’ guiding light to lead the way, the walls repeating the falling of their feet. It had sounded like drumming. She’d known they weren’t alone: the rocks and stones had echoed their song back to her, keeping her company in the eerie fog of never ending darkness. 

She squints ahead, but not to see through the mist that’s curling around her: instead she tries to picture Orpheus’ back, the lyre strung across his shoulders, his head held high and his back straight as he had dutifully marched without looking back. She looks for so long that tears rise to her eyes (but if they’re from the strain or from the pain, Eurydice doesn’t know).

It’s funny. She’d give anything, suddenly, to be back where they had been: not even in the summer before all of this had happened, sleeping in fields of flowers and enraptured in each other, but to be like they were when they had promised to walk beside each other. Confident. Faithful. She misses him with every beat of her heart.

This walk sucks. She wonders if this is what it did to Orpheus: wormed its way into his head until he could hear nothing but the howl of silence, the awful, faraway drip of water that comes from nowhere and leads nowhere, the echo of his pulse in his ears. She wonders if he sang. She should. Sing, that is.

She opens her mouth and sings a few of his notes, but they don’t come out like they should. Maybe it’s the accursed echo in here (_nowhere_) or maybe it’s simply because they’re not her words to be singing, but it doesn’t sound as it normally does. Maybe the notes fall flat in a world without their composer to sing them, like only he knows the secret to how to sing them so beautifully.

She misses him.

This walk sucks.

Doubt creeps into her mind. She had only made this walk the first time because she’d had Orpheus to guide her: without him, who is she? A runaway from everywhere she’d ever been? A hungry young girl wandering around in the cold and dark, flitting wherever the wind blows, never loving again? She is nothing without Orpheus. He’s her sun and her stars and her world. Without him to guide her, she’s nothing more than a shade in the fields of Asphodel.

But then she thinks of the word _ widow_, of the urge to run that beats wildly against her ribcage, of the fire that simmers low in her gut, a constant coil of resolve. Orpheus is still with her, still guiding her steps, even if he isn’t present. He’s still there in the back of her mind, singing his song and filling her heart. He’s down there waiting for her. 

Doubt comes in.

But Eurydice doesn’t turn around.

**⚘ **

When she rests and eats, she eats the salted meat first.

It’ll be no use to her if it goes bad, and she thinks she’s been walking for a while. It’s hard to tell in the dark, when there isn’t any sort of light or direction to distinguish time with. It’s funny how she’s hungry: not in a laughing way, but an ironic one. Last time they were walking out of here, it was Orpheus battling exhaustion and hunger. Now it’s Eurydice who’s going to suffer.

Imagine this becoming a loop. Round and round and round they go, saving each other because they can never let go, are never willing to leave each other to fall apart in Hadestown. They’ll always come for one another. It would be a tragic tale, if ever it was told.

Good thing that’s not this tale.

She has a lot of time to think on the road to hell. She isn’t met by anyone, friend or foe — something that she thinks must be odd, because Orpheus arrived with cuts on his face and bruises on his body. There must have been some trouble getting here if it took him so long. But in her experience, there had been no resistance going out of the Underworld and thus far there has been none going back into it.

Time blurs away. She thinks so much that she knows time is passing, because she’ll stumble upon a thought that she’s thought a hundred times before on the walk. But she has no way of knowing how much time is going by. No guide to live by except how much she thinks, and how much she misses Orpheus. When she dreams, it’s always of him. The worst ones are the ones where she finds him, and wakes up to the cold and dark again.

When she’s lonely, she hugs his lyre close as she walks, as if she can feel him through it. His neckerchief still bears an inkling of his scent, and she tries her best not to bury her nose into it too much lest she cause it to fade permanently. These are the only two things she has of him: she doesn’t know what she’d do if those faded away too.

Her feet ache. Exhaustion seeps into her bones and stays there. Everything hurts: everything is sore. She chews on the dried fruits (the last of it, the reserves have dwindled so much that she’s hungry, constantly hungry, but it’s enough, enough to go on). She won’t lie down here. Not until Orpheus is safe with her again, and they’re up top.

Finally, like a beacon in an endless night, she sees a glow in the distance. It’s not exactly a glare — not the glare that she thought she could see from the train — but it’s bright enough to renew her hope, and her steps quicken. She feels lighter than she ever has, like she could float away on the air, like she’s a feather in the breeze. She whisks closer to Hadestown with every skipping step, closer to Orpheus.

She furrows her brow and summons all of her strength. Orpheus is so close. She just needs to get to those lights in the distance (and how lovely it is for there to be a distance to see). She just needs to keep walking, and she’ll be in Orpheus’ arms again.

She plods along, limbs heavy but eyes bright, until the wall comes into view. And even then, she walks on.

She comes to a stop a foot away from the wall, feet burning and heart pounding, mouth dry and eyes wet. Orpheus got through last time by singing a song so beautiful that the stones wept. But Eurydice has no song to sing; the only song to sing is his, and she’s already determined that’s out of the question.

The tears filling her eyes overflow, and she chokes on them, hiccuping. She’s come all this way. All this way just to be denied. 

She rests her palm against the wall. She imagines she can feel Orpheus’ warmth on the other side — but that’s impossible. He’s in the mines, working his afterlife away. The only warmth that comes through this wall is the warmth of the furnaces, fueled by the fossils of the dead. 

Eurydice sobs openly then, heart breaking. All this way. She’s suffered all this way, missing Orpheus all this way (always, always missing him), just to lose now? She can’t scale the wall: it’s too high. The workers are on the other side, and will most certainly report her to Hades; he’s sure to have quelled the revolution by now. She’s all alone.

She’s always been alone, until Orpheus came along, and perhaps it’s this thought that destroys her so. 

She rests her forehead against the stone, crying without remorse. There is no one here to see her tears: no one but the stones that wept at Orpheus’ song, and her own foolish heart. She hates herself. She hates falling in love with him, she hates leaving him, she hates signing that stupid contract that got them here in the first place. She hates taking that train. She hates being human, hates being hungry enough to let go of the one good thing in her life just for a full belly.

“Orpheus,” she sobs, hiccuping. “_Orpheus_.”

She slides down the wall, curls up into a ball, and cries all the tears she has for her husband — her beautiful, brilliant husband, framed in her mind in the light of the sun, beautiful and ethereal. The lyre bumps against her back as if to comfort her, and she swings it around to clutch it to her chest, enfolding it in her arms as if it’s Orpheus himself. She strokes its body gently like she’d stroke Orpheus’ hair, crying desperately, nose buried into Orpheus’ neckerchief, scent long since faded. 

“Orpheus,” she trembles. “Orpheus, Orpheus, _ Orpheus_.” Like his name is a benediction: like his name is a cure to all her ailments, a song she can sing when she is hurting and he will come along to fix it all again. She craves nothing more than to see him, to hold him forever. She says his name like it will summon him to her, fulfill her wish so she can hold him close and never let him go. 

But she did. She did let him go.

And oh, how she wishes she hadn’t.

“Flowers,” she chokes out, gripping the neck of the lyre and wrapping her other arm around herself. It’s a meager attempt at comfort. It’s all she has now. “I re-remember fields of… flowers… soft beneath my-my heels. I remember some-someone, someone by my side… turn his fa-face to mine…” her expression crumples, and a new wave of tears come. “But then I turned _ away.” _

Under her cheek, the wall is wet with her tears. It feels like it’s trembling with her, quivering with how hard she’s crying.

… Actually…

Eurydice lifts her tearstained face, looking up at the wall. It glistens in the nonexistent light, damp, and Eurydice’s eyes track faint wavering in the dark. It’s not possible. It’s not — it can’t be possible.

But the stones are weeping.

A deep rumble starts to the ground, and she leaps to her feet, weakness forgotten as her tear tracks dry on her face. Before her eyes, the stones begin to bubble and shift, revealing the slightest opening for her to slip through.

Overcome, she leans forward and presses her lips to the stones, to the slight moisture collected there after ages of dry air and heat. “Thank you,” she whispers to them as she passes beneath the path they’ve created for her, for Orpheus, for their love. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

**⚘ **

She’d thought she’d known what Hadestown would look like.

A necropolis of neon chrome, a cesspool for misery, burned into her memory like the imprint of the sun behind someone’s eyes: it’s bright, hot, and stings whenever she tries to look at it too closely. But as she treks across what she remembers as a barren, wasted city of carnival lights and furnace fueled heat, she takes in the changes that she can see.

The lights are dimmer. Not that Hadestown is dark: it’s simply more pleasant, a quiet afterglow in an otherwise dark world. The air is clearer from what she can tell: it doesn’t hurt to take a deep breath and she can see farther than she recalls being able to. Not that she was doing much looking, anyhow; she was too busy keeping her head low with the rest of the workers.

Speaking of them, however, there seem to be fewer workers and more… _ people_. They mill about in the streets, painting or weaving or selling wares, perfectly at home in their element. Others shop amongst them, picking this and that and exchanging some form of paper that Eurydice can’t quite see clearly. It’s a trade system, maybe, created after the revolution, definitely — but Eurydice can’t quite imagine that King Hades would allow such a thing.

She’s nowhere near the mines at the moment, but she can imagine that they’re much changed as well. She half wishes she could go there, divert her course to observe the changes that have taken place there as well, but her feet carry her faithfully in one direction (Orpheus, always to Orpheus) and she can’t summon the strength to resist them. She doesn’t want to. Her heart aches for him desperately.

Her feet lead her down lanes she’s never tread before, further from the city and towards the River Styx. She’s never seen it and has had no desire to do so, but as a figure starts to come into focus in the distance she thinks that maybe Orpheus has been guiding her all this way after all.

The figure gives her a nod, bent over a pole and standing towards the back of a small boat. Upon further inspection, Eurydice realizes the pole controls the rudder. 

She regards the man — for he’s a man, certainly; his eyes are tired and he’s pale like all the others in Hadestown, but he’s not so deformed that she can’t tell what he is. She doesn’t know what to do now. If this is some sort of test, she’s not entirely sure she’s equipped for it. All she has is her own two legs and a lyre. 

And yet her heart tells her differently. 

“...Hello,” she finally says. “I’m Eurydice.”

The man nods, and smiles thinly. It’s an expression that looks unfamiliar to his face. “Get in.”

Eurydice doesn’t wait. She doesn’t know where it goes, but her heart tells her to Orpheus. Always to Orpheus.

She clamors into the boat and sits before she falls in, heart beating wildly. The man doesn’t speak to her again: doesn’t even look at her. The boat glides away from the shore silently, deadly, with all the grace of a shadow.

Once upon a time, Eurydice wouldn’t have let her guard down. But she’s walked such a long way, and her feet ache, and her legs are so tired. Her head pounds. She’d forgotten how foggy being in Hadestown made you, how the smog drifted into your mind and lingered there, blocking your thoughts from being thought correctly. Everything obtains a sort of haze, after a while — especially when you aren’t paying attention.

Attention. She has to remember what she’s come here for. She’s come for Orpheus, to save him like he saved her. If there’s one thing she cannot — _ will not _ forget it’s Orpheus, and the way his eyes sparkle when he smiles, and the way his lips quirk when he plays his lyre. She remembers his voice from her dreams, always faithful to him but never doing him justice. She remembers how she felt when they were lying together in the field of flowers, under the sun, Orpheus by her side.

She treasures this memory in particular. Maybe it’s because this memory is the one that she clung to when she was sent to Hadestown in the first place — or maybe because it was the first time in her very hard life that Eurydice ever felt loved. Still, she cradles it like a well worn photograph, creased with devotion at the corners. She tucks her nose to his neckerchief, and pretends it still smells like him.

There’s nothing to see on the River; the banks become slopes, the wall on one side and indistinguishable Hadestown on the other. Eurydice’s fingers curl around the neck of the lyre, hugging it closer to her. The boat barely rocks, barely seems to move in the water. Not one splash is created. Not one ripple.

They glide along for an indeterminate amount of time before they finally ease to a stop, pulling alongside the bank and barely bumping against the side. Eurydice watches the boatman step carefully out of his craft. “Out,” he says, and Eurydice carefully stands, expecting to wobble. It’s perfectly still, and doesn’t move an inch as she departs.

“Thank you,” she says, once her feet hit dry land again.

The man stares at her. “Follow the trail,” he says. “Don’t stray. Don’t get lost. Remember why you’re here.”

Eurydice fumbles for words, but it doesn’t matter: he pushes off against the bank, boat gliding away as silently as it had arrived. She watches as it disappears in the distance, then hoists the lyre higher on her shoulder and gets to walking.

The path is obvious to her almost instantly: the cobbled road, old and clearly well traveled, is lined with carnations, poppy red a bright splotch in an otherwise dull and darkened world. She places her feet carefully, afraid to step on the weeds that are tentatively poking their way through the cracks in the cobble, ears straining for the faintest hint that Orpheus is here, the faintest clue, a whisper on the wind…

The path guides her past beautiful, thriving gardens, lush with life and flowers of every color; past a greenhouse and a well; past a maze of statues and delicately carved sculptures. Her path finally trails off at the steps of a giant estate, carnations making way for smooth marble stairs and a towering mansion. 

Fear rises in her, coiling in her stomach. Her heart pounds. Her mouth is dry. How could she think she could do this? Who does she think she is? She can’t walk up to Hades’ personal estate and demand Orpheus back. Who is she to think that he’d let her win? Why would he let Orpheus go? And who is she to say that Orpheus himself would follow her back alone?

Overwhelmed, tears press at her eyes, burn behind her lids as she closes them. She shouldn’t be here. Why did she think she could do this? Why did she think she could encroach upon the King of Hadestown and come out on top? Why would Hades let them win twice? 

Her breath catches. Tears threaten to spill, and she dashes them away. She can’t turn back — she can’t turn around. Orpheus is stuck here, her beautiful Orpheus, and even if she has to bargain her own life away again she won’t leave him down here to rot.

She’ll fall apart without him.

She ascends the stairs one at a time, each footfall like a crack of thunder. The door looms, a hulking thing. Her palm is sweaty when she grasps the handle, and for a fleeting moment her heart abandons her and flees, and her feet want to fly away from this place forever, run away just like she always has —

But then she turns the knob and the door drifts open, and the moment passes.

Lyrics float to her, light and airy and accompanied by a sound she’d never thought she’d hear again: the voice in her dreams, the lyre she thought had been permanently silenced.

_ “While you live, shine,” _ Orpheus’ voice sings, echoing and far away. The lyre sounds hauntingly beautiful, notes gently plucked and bewitching to all those who hear them. It’s the sound she’s been straining to hear since she got to Hadestown. Her North star. _ “Have no grief at all…” _

“Orpheus,” she tries to call, but her voice is a rasp, barely there and swept away by the large hallways and grand corridors. Instead, she painstakingly unsticks her frozen feet, taking stumbling, shaking steps towards that gorgeous music, towards Orpheus’ voice guiding her home. “Orpheus.”

_ “Life exists only for a short while…” _

“Orpheus,” she calls in a whisper, heart hammering and throat spasming, lungs constricting uselessly in her chest. She needs him, needs him more than she needs air. Needs him like flowers need the sun and the moon needs the stars and like oceans need horizons. “Orpheus.”

_ “And time,” _ Orpheus’ voice flutters, _ closer closer closer closer closer, “demands its —” _

Eurydice reaches the door and throws it open.

It hits the wall with a bang that startles her; she jumps, stomach leaping into her throat as she looks around, trying to take in everything and registering nothing because there he is. Orpheus, her Orpheus, her lovely poet, her sun and moon and stars is here, and he’s sitting and playing his lyre — his lyre, his lyre, a new lyre? He’s looking at her like he’s seeing a ghost, but it’s her, she’s the one seeing him, he’s been a ghost to her for so long —

She limps towards him, feet aching and heart soaring, and he jumps to his feet with a cry of her name, rushing to her. He wraps her into his arms, lyre completely forgotten, and she wraps her arms around him as tight as she can, tighter than she can, tighter than she ever has. It isn’t until he’s hushing her that she realizes she’s been repeating his name over and over — _ Orpheus, Orpheus, Orpheus _ and _ I’m here, I’m here, I’m here _ in a steady rhythm. She wishes she could say something clever _ (come home with me) _ but her heart is full and her feet are light and she could fly. He’s here. He’s here. He’s here.

“You came,” he breathes into her hair, and she lets out a laugh that sounds nothing like laughter.

“Of course I came, you’re here,” she sobs. “Wherever you are is where I’ll go.”

He pulls her away from his chest, hands on her cheeks, thumbs stroking away her tears. His eyes are so _ green, _so green and full of _ life. _“How did you get past the wall?”

Eurydice laughs through her tears. “I sang a song,” she says. “So beautiful that the stones wept, and they let me in.” She takes his hands and presses into them all the promises in the world, all the promises he’s ever made and kept. “And I can sing us home again.”

Orpheus’ eyes crinkle as he smiles. “Yes you can.”

Eurydice nods, tears still rolling, and buries herself into his arms, lyre across her back and all. She rests her ear over his heart, and —

Oh.

She stiffens, and looks up at him. He’s already looking down at her, some sort of emotion in his eyes that’s soft without being pitying, and a noise escapes her — something between a moan and a whimper — as she puts her head back down. He strokes her hair gently, resting his cheek against the top of her head.

“It’s alright,” he whispers to her. “It’s alright. I’m alright. Mister Hades has been making sure.”

She pulls away from him, brows furrowing. “...King Hades?”

“That’s my name,” a voice rumbles from behind her, and she stiffens. “Didn’t think I’d see you down here again, little songbird.”

She springs into action. She flips Orpheus so that he’s standing behind her; she clutches at his forearms, draws him close so that the lyre on her back is pressed against Orpheus’ chest, and puts herself decidedly between Orpheus and Hades, face set in stone.

Hades, for his part, only regards her with amusement. “Though I suppose I knew that you’d come for your poet,” he continues like nothing’s happened. 

“Eurydice,” Orpheus whispers from behind her, pressing against her. “Eurydice.”

“What do you want?” she demands.

Hades looks at her. Orpheus hisses her name again, pressing against her more insistently. 

For the first time, she truly takes in their surroundings. They’re in a lush sitting room, complete with dark walls and furnishings, a tasteful rug and some curtains. There’s even a fireplace. Upon the mantle there are several strange looking herbs; they’re healthy, like they live their lives happily without water or tending. There’s a fire crackling in the fireplace. A lyre lays, abandoned, on the couch on the left side of the small coffee table; on the other, a folded newspaper and some spectacles.

“What… what’s going on?” she says, more confusion than fear now, and Orpheus tucks his forehead against the back of her neck with a huff of amusement. The tension drains from the room so quickly it’s like it never existed.

“We’ve been waitin’ for you,” Hades says.

**⚘**

They’re bundled up onto the train.

Hades treats her feet, feeds her ambrosia and nectar. Orpheus hovers by her side, never wandering, never wavering. He clutches his new lyre in his arms, but it seems paltry compared to the way that he holds her hand. Wrapped in Orpheus’ arms, sheltered by his song, she lays there and loves him and loves him and loves him. He’s speechless for it — or perhaps just overcome by the love she has for him — but he holds her, and it feels like he never wants to let her go.

The train doesn’t come right away, but when it does they’re ushered onto it without urgency. Tucked in Hades’ compartment with Orpheus, Eurydice dozes for most of the ride, catching up on sleep and rest that she hasn’t been granted in many months — that she hasn’t been able to get since Orpheus took his last breath. She lies in his arms with her ear against his chest, but she doesn’t strain for a heartbeat: instead, she feels the vibrations of his voice through her cheek, and lets it warm her.

When it finally pulls into the station, there’s a beautiful, green clad figure on the other side. 

“Lady Persephone,” Orpheus breathes, and she smiles at him and kisses his cheeks, and takes Eurydice’s hand.

“You could have waited for me,” she says, teasingly accusatory. “I would have let you come with me.”

Eurydice just shakes her head.

Hades and Persephone embrace, and he kisses her cheek. Eurydice does her best not to overhear anything, because after all he’s done for them she doesn’t think her eavesdropping would be quite appreciated. He manages to catch her eye, though, and she thinks she sees him wink when Persephone’s back is turned.

The train pulls away, the distant _chugga chugga chugga chugga_ fading with every clickety clack it makes back down to Hadestown.

She and Orpheus stand, side by side, in the fading autumn sun.

She takes his hand.

“Do you let me walk with you?” She whispers, and he smiles, brilliant and beautiful.

“And keep on walking, come what will?” He faces her, eyes so green, so vibrant. She presses her hand to his chest. Below her palm, a steady two-thump greets her. The beat of his beautiful, lovely heart.

She presses her wobbling lips together, and meets his eyes. “I will.”

He smiles. “I will.”

She can’t help it. Her expression cracks, and tears begin to roll down her cheeks. “What happens now?” she whispers, and tucks herself to his chest, lays her ear over that heart, that beautiful, beating heart.

He lays his cheek atop her head, and kisses her forehead. “Now you take me home with you."

**⚘**

"You called my name..."

"You came."

\- _Come Home With Me (Reprise)_, Hadestown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap folks! I hope you enjoyed this little story, I'd absolutely love to hear some of your thoughts! I'm definitely not done with my works in this fandom, so I'll see y'all around! Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> Credit where credit is due: the song Orpheus sings is one many historians believe to be the first written ballad, which you can find details on here. https://theancientrhythmoflove.weebly.com/seikilos-epitaph.html. @singsfree.tumblr.com is the inspiration, beta, and co author of this story, so please go give her some love! 
> 
> If you'd like to follow me elsewhere, you can catch my Hadestown blogs @riiotkissed.tumblr.com, @followsbehind.tumblr.com, and my main blog @riffrcffed.tumblr.com!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Injured](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21376411) by [Theonewhobloomsinthebittersnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theonewhobloomsinthebittersnow/pseuds/Theonewhobloomsinthebittersnow)


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